Rating: 
Summary: Despite what other people have said, this is a great book
Review: I don't know how those other reviewers can make such steep statements against a great book like this. Getting 10,000 records from a 'matrix' and putting them into an excel file CLEARLY is not what this book is about. That is NOT a 'simple' example. That guy obviously does not know what he's talking about. And then he goes on to rave about how it covers waste-of-time subjects like select, insert, and update, which are THE fundamentals of SQL.Don't trust those reviewers' judgements and pass up an opportunity for a book of this calibur. This is a great book, it starts you out with a plan of a simple database, walks you through developing it and processing it through flat-files, DBM, and DBI, and introduces new problems and challenges. This book is for intermediately-skilled Perl programmers that are interested in taking their skills to the next level and joining in one of the most widely-used practices in the Web, database construction and management.
Rating: 
Summary: Perl DBI falls short of what I would expect from O'Reilly
Review: I liked it after chapter 3... chapters 1 & 2 had SO MUCH to do with DBM (which is NOT DBI) and db_file, that i thought i would scream! Nothing good until page 78...but then, IT IS AWESOME! in depth detail on DBI::Proxy which I have not seen elsewhere... BUT as of page 187, it goes back into "appendix mode" which we can get by typing perldoc DBI So--you have to ask yourself, are 109 pages worth the price? I bought it and i really think that even the AMAZON price was a bit steep to pay for this one. ALTHOUGH I love O'Reilly, they needed to get more in-depth for me and considering that we have the Camel, the Perl Cookbook and company...which are EXTREMELY in-depth. This is not a book which i would consider "O'Reilly Material"
Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: I really appreciate having this book around. Sure, there is much material on the internet on how to use the DBI, but I prefer it all in book form. I used to do a little PHP scripting, but I think that Perl and it's DBI is a better choice than it (but a little harder to learn, however). The DBI is quite a portable, flexible, and powerful system that I have come to love :) If there was one thing I would add/change to this book, I would have added more real life examples. Not much was focused on using databases for web sites, but that's ok, I guess, since it's not that much different. If a 16 year old like myself can follow and understand most of the stuff in this book, there's no reason why anyone else shouldn't be able to :)
Rating:
Summary: Think you know DBI? Read the book and then answer.
Review: I received The Book a few days ago from Amazon and have read it cover to cover. As an early and long-time user of Perl DBI, I was delighted to discover ways and means that were previously unknow to me. Maybe I'm not alone in failing to study the docs after each new release of DBI. The Book format is easy to flip through and get the unexpected know-how.
Rating:
Summary: THIS BOOK IS USELESS!
Review: I typically go to O'Reilly for manuals FIRST because they are well-written and contain coherent explanations and good examples which the reader can use as models. This book has neither. The examples are insanely limited (for example, there is nothing whatsoever about using UPDATE: the authors apparently believe that all databases on the planet are complete and that no one will ever want to change any of them), and one find oneself hopping around the book trying to get SOME indication of how things are supposed to work - therefore its usefulness as a reference book is also limited. In short, wait until something else comes along and until then either read the documentation that comes with the DBI module or the source code itself. You'll save yourself more time that way.
Rating: 
Summary: Where is the meat?
Review: I'm a new perl user, and I found no new information in thisbook. It has the same depth of coverage that can be had for FREE allover the 'Net. Don't buy this book. It's not worth the purchase price!
Rating:
Summary: Useful, even for insiders
Review: I'm biassed; I'm the primary author of the DBD::Informix module. And I bought my copy of the book. The Cheetah Book has a lot of useful information in it. Obviously, it describes the core DBI functionality very clearly, but it also contains a lot of information that was not previously available in a form comparable to what is in the book. For example, the extensive Appendix B, which lists a lot of details about each of the various drivers, is very useful and informative indeed. The information is not yet available elsewhere in this format, and you'd have to download all the drivers to be able to get all the information in one place. The guide to using the DBI Proxy Server is invaluable. The non-DBI database information in Chapter 2 is interesting; it shows how diverse the Perl modules are. And the comparison with Win32::ODBC is illuminating. There is information in the main text which has not been documented before, such as the "use DBI qw(:sql_types);" -- that isn't in Appendix A (the DBI Specification), either, but that oversight will no doubt be fixed so that it is in 'perldoc DBI' by the time DBI 1.14 is available on CPAN. This book does not attempt to teach you the rudiments of Perl, and nor should it. It does not teach everything about SQL, and nor should it. It doesn't teach you about every possible use of DBI, and it shouldn't try to do that either. It is a pity that the use of DBI with the Apache web server and mod_perl is not covered at all, but even that would be difficult to do sensibly. Half the effort would be in explaining how to handle HTML and CGI and not in using DBI per se. Nevertheless, should there be a second edition, this is something that should be covered in outline, even if not in complete detail. If you have any intention of working with DBI, either as a regular user or as a driver writer, you need this book. It is clear and pleasant to read. Having the DBI specification printed in book format is worth the price of the book alone; the rest of the material is also very valuable. Go, Buy!
Rating:
Summary: Login to the future of Perl/Database access
Review: In "Programming the Perl DBI", Alligator Descartes and Tim Bunce have taken the already excellent documentation for DBI and framed it with a techno-anthropogical view of the last 25 years of data access to one side and a menagerie of DBD function descriptions to the other. Their use of megaliths are the perfect backdrop to demonstrating the various paths in and around the DBI, and the depth and breadth of the subject coverage is exceptional. This is, hopefully, the beginning of a trend of well-written books on firmly established Perl modules.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for what it is.
Review: It's hard to imagine an entire book about this. It's not bad, for what it is though. If you have any database knowledge and read the appropriate sections already in Programming Perl or the Perl Cookbook, I don't imagine you'll get too much use from this.
Rating:
Summary: VERY VERY lightweight on necessary info!
Review: Look, most of us have projects to get done. I need a book that gives real world examples; not showing me how to print "SELECT * from foo" and nothing else. What if I want to store the 10,000 rows I get back into a matrix and print them to a csv file to be loaded into excel? That is a simple, real world problem. What do you do with SQL statements? You're inserting, updating, deleting, etc. All this book tells you is how to print out rows that you retrieve. Actually, let me rephrase that. It prints the code on the page and prints out the results. Everybody knows that Perl is powerful but it's also cryptic and needs explaination. The authors think that they are doing great jobs because they tell you how to connect to the db. Great, I can only get that through 2000 different search engines! Tell me something I don't know. Tell me how to store the result of a select statement in a matrix for later use. This is simple stuff. How the heck can you decide how to update a database if you can't get a handle on the information in a matrix to evaluate it? Unfortunately, the majority of tech writers are very VERY bad at conveying what they know. Very basic database operations are completely ignored. I think before these books are published, people need to evaluate them so that they can be re-written. This book honestly gives you no more info than what you could get on the internet.
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